The Lady in Darkness and the Woman of Perpetual Gr
by Alithea
Summary: Lady Une reflects on who she is, and who she was... Takes place after the end of the T.V. series. One chapter is ready and I may or may not have the conviction to write the rest. Future chapters may contain some shoujo-ai elements.


**Title: The Lady in Darkness and the Woman of Perpetual Grace  
****Chapter 1: The Ghosts in the Mirrors  
****Rating: PG-13  
****I do not own the characters of Gundam Wing. I am just borrowing.  
****Poetry belongs to me, various verses from a poem called "On the Mark and In the Rain"  
****Author's note: As sad as it is to say, I'm not quite sure when I'll be able to continue this. But this little chapter does hold up nicely as a stand alone character piece so please do not shy away from reading it just because it is incomplete. **

The rain threatened to distract her from her task but she sat dutifully at her vanity and began the errand of looking at her reflection. It was not something that was easy for her to do, not yet. It was still too soon after everything had occurred, but she had her duties to perform and so forced herself as soldier to endure the suggested moment of therapy. It would help keep her in balance the doctors had said. It was the best course to take given her situation, that and the bottle of pills that sat to her left near her hair brush.

She winced instinctively at the bottle and then she went about the business of staring into the mirror. She would go over every facet of her face in order to learn more about the person she saw therein. To discover exactly who it was, she really was.

She began as so many do with her eyes. Her eyes had a slight almond shape. They were a brown the shade of a hazelnut. At first glance she realized how cold they seemed, how they seemed to narrow in anticipation and calculation of something cruel or perhaps even bitterly cynical of the world. They were in that first glance the eyes of a villain, because they dug in deep with a threat to unearth every secret they dared to find. Gradually though under the light she noticed that her eyes were soft, and welcoming. They were...peaceful. And the thought made her shut her eyes for a moment.

She continued on to her mouth which was delicate and refined. The smile she presented to the mirror inviting and supple. There was charm there, and there was grace. It vanished suddenly (all the warmth, all the charm) and she frowned noting that her lips were stern, harsh, and even vindictive in design.

Again her eyes shut and then with a deep breath she fought to continue.

The profile of her nose was somewhat sharp, but there was a touch of roundness (some would even say cuteness). Her chin was purposeful but not angular. She had the few beginnings of wrinkles, laugh lines here, frown lines there, but her skin was still smooth with youth for she was still in her early twenties.

And then there was her hair which was a brown that did not quite match her eyes because it was a shade of chestnut. It was straight, although there was an ounce or so of body that could be seen. It billowed down just passed her shoulders, though she customarily pulled it back into a braid (no buns she could not stand to put her hair up in buns any longer) so that it was out of her way and, to her eye, more professional in appearance (more military, more strict, it could not be too loose). It was just another aspect of her self that seemed split.

Her glance wandered down to the top of her vanity where there was a clutter of belongs on one side and on the other things were neatly organized and placed. Her jewelry box was to her right and it was packed sloppily with necklace chains, a string of pearls and a few rings that she hardly ever wore. There was a small collection of make-up to her right, except a tube of rose pink lipstick which was neatly set to the left, along with her hair brush, a bottle of perfume, and a box neatly filled with bobby pins and ribbons for her hair. And glasses... There was a pair of circular, wireless frame glasses that sat very particularly in an open case and the sight of them made her feel confident and cruel. The rose engraved design on her jewelry box made her feel serene and elegant. That box made her feel graceful something she regarded as being very important because it was...

And she did not want to think about such things so she looked at the whole of her reflection in the mirror. She sat there as the rain poured in buckets outside of one of her family's homes (she had no family left, they were all dead) in northern Europe waiting for winter to come and devour the land in sheets of white. Sitting there she could almost see two vastly different reflections. She saw a colonel who could be harsh, cruel, vindictive, cynical, plotting, cunning and graceless, but the colonel was strong and always did what she had to. She was a soldier and not easily beaten. She saw also, a lady reflected in the glass, who could be kind, warm, inviting, charming, sweet, and graceful, and the lady was weaker, though her heart beat strongly for the causes she had chosen to champion. She was a woman of means and privilege and it was her duty to help those in need.

With a deep breath she picked up the bottle of pills. She looked over the label and then at her reflection. She had already taken her pill for the day. She had done her exercise and it left her feeling, as always, lost. She had had enough. She was frustrated and so being took the bottle in her hand and threw as hard as she could at the mirror.

The mirror cracked.

She sank to her knees and began to cry. And her tears fell as easily as the rain. And she could not seem to stop.

She cried because she did not know how to be both the colonel and the lady combined as one. She could only vaguely recall a time when the two were ever whole instead of halves separated from each other. She did not know how they could have ever been one person, even though they were both calmly inside of her. She felt them there beneath the surface of her skin almost all too clearly, the colonel and the lady, the two parts that made her who she was.

There were times when she could keep things together (she wondered if it was because of the medication or the gunshot wound that nearly killed her) and she could pretend that she was whole. She could make believe and she could be the leader of the Preventors (the organization formed to keep the current peace, the organization that did not really exist to keep further rebellion from spreading),

just as the president had made her. She could be what the world expected her to be (and it hurt her to think of the world and leaders) and what those around her saw her as, a leader who would protect the world (but the leader that the world needed was dead).

She sighed and found her strength because he would not want her to be weak. She knew this, and she also knew that the reason she felt so torn was because she had been pretending. She stared at the cracked mirror and she understood. She was not whole and she may not ever be again. She was two encompassed into one and she could not let one side have more sway than the other. If she found the balance in herself perhaps one day she would truly be able to say she was whole. The world could hear what it wanted but she knew the truth and the truth was there were things for which she was accountable.

_Oh you know the mirror always lies_

_It never shows the different things hidden way down_

_And inside the feelings that I have buried start to shift_

_So I am a lady but I am too dark to be forgiven_

_So I am something like a leader but I am not the leader they need_

_This piece of glass it shows me what I really am_

In the beginning just after the war had ended, perhaps no longer than a month, she had felt perfectly fine. She felt ready for the aftermath and what wars inevitably brought with them.

She attended the first in a series of trials which declared that the war had been just and in the end no one (person or group) was guilty or truly accountable for anything. The important thing the trials had concluded was that the earth and its colonies began to build a true bridge to peace. It was important to rebuild and make the world new, to put aside the past and carry on into what was a brilliant future.

The verdict was coupled by a speech from the newly appointed Vice Foreign Minister Relena Darlain. The speech, the sheer audacity of the entire thing fueled a spark of rage in Une that she had not felt since the girl had shot a rose of the lapel of her jacket. She owed that girl an apology of sorts (how does one apologize for taking someone's life), she understood that she deserved whatever snub the girl threw her way, but that speech... she could not understand what it was about that speech that just made her want to murder the girl on sight. Looking around at the trial she had seen only a few other faces who seemed disturbed by the message of the speech, but everyone else applauded proudly. It felt like a stab through her heart.

What it really was though was a betrayal. The entire thing, the trials, the speeches, and the overly confident applause that followed was a betrayal to every good soldier (be he a rebel, part of the old Alliance, or OZ) who fought the war. It was an affront to her deceased commander's ideals that humanity needed to take itself into account for the wrongs it did or pay the price found in a revolution. It was the very reason he had begun the coup in the first place, to change the world for the better and teach it a lesson it had long forgotten.

Trieze Kushrenada...His ideals, his beliefs, his world vision those were things that she had thought she understood. She fought and killed to bring his vision to life because his ideas made sense and they moved her. They touched something in her soul and made her believe in the power of them. His truths that he spoke of with such brilliance and...grace (that word again haunting her every time it came up). Those things that she fought so desperately to understanding perfectly she ended up splitting herself in two so she could carry them out.

She had loved him. She loved him and he would never feel that same way for her because he had other things to attend to, and because deep down he understood that there would always be two people who knew him wholly and truly. Two people who would ever understand his dream and purpose and she was one of them. He could not allow that understanding in any other form but that of friend or subordinate. So she was his dutiful assistant, and lived to carry out his orders. She lived for his dream. She loved him for his dream but in the end she discovered that perhaps she did not understand as well as she should. It killed her in a way. It made her split even more painful and caused her to doubt. But still she fought for him, still though she knew she might just be fooling herself into comprehension of his dream for the world and outer space. Her love for him, that hopeless thing, was why she carried on, and why she accepted the position that had been given her.

The trials were too much for her all the same. She could feel the vindictive colonel as she clenched her jaw at the sound of the Vice Foreign Minister's speech, felt the anger, and the want to undo the new peace. And under the colonel she could hear the soft plea of the lady begging for peace. With the realization that things were not quite right she had decided it was time to take a short leave and consult with one of the many doctors that were still watching out for her. She may have appeared well, but that did not mean the president was blind enough to give her command of the Preventors without some stipulations, such as regular psychiatric evaluations and mandatory treatment for her "condition". The checks and balances were all in place for her to succeed as a leader, but she understood that the journey of being at ease was only just beginning.

To be continued...


End file.
